FOP 0.90 Feedback

[Jess Holle <je...@ptc.com>]

I noticed 0.90 and the request for feedback.

Just a small nugget of point feedback:

For my own usage, FOP's applicability and usefulness will not change 
from that of 0.20.5 until auto table layout is implemented.

I note that in the 0.90 release notes that it is not yet implemented, 
unfortunately.

I assume that the FOP developers made great strides in many areas since 
0.20.5, but the lack of auto table layout kills general relational data 
set output single-handedly.  By "general", I mean use of a single XSLT 
to generate appropriate XSL FO for a given type of tabular output.  By 
"given type of tabular output", I do not mean that a different XSLT 
should be used depending on how many columns are in the resulting table 
-- rather the same XSLT is used irrespective of number of columns unless 
the look-and-feel or functionality (e.g. a summation line should be 
added) of the table should change.

Decimal separator-based tab stops would also be nice in this same use 
case, but the critical need is automatic table layout.

--
Jess Holle

Re: FOP 0.90 Feedback

[Jess Holle <je...@ptc.com>]

As I said, this is not nearly so important as automatic table layout, 
but it is a very important feature for tables of numeric (e.g. 
financial, inventory, or scientific) data -- whether or not the table is 
layed out automatically.

--
Jess Holle

Jeremias Maerki wrote:

>Hey, you're right. text-align defines "<string>" for table-cells only which
>should allow stuff like that. Unfortunately, this is not implemented.
>Until today, this little feature never caught my eye. Interesting.
>  
>

Re: FOP 0.90 Feedback

[Jeremias Maerki <de...@jeremias-maerki.ch>]

Hey, you're right. text-align defines "<string>" for table-cells only which
should allow stuff like that. Unfortunately, this is not implemented.
Until today, this little feature never caught my eye. Interesting.

On 08.12.2005 17:43:26 Jess Holle wrote:
> Jeremias Maerki wrote:
> 
> >Funny coincidence. I just issued another request for feedback on
> >fop-users. Thanks for yours!
> >
> >It's understandable that auto table layout is a big desire. Not only for
> >those who want to create reports from database queries but also for
> >those who want to convert (X)HTML to PDF. I personally believe that it
> >will not be a huge task to get some basic auto table layout
> >functionality with the new codebase. Still, I must admit that this topic
> >is not on the top of my list, currently. I still hope somebody else
> >might jump in.
> >
> >Concerning the tab stops: Unfortunately, this concept does not exist in
> >XSL-FO and therefore not in FOP.
> >
> Actually I didn't really mean "tab stop", sorry.  I meant decimal 
> alignment, which I had thought XSL FO had.
> 
> Perhaps I was thinking of XHTML, whose <td> element has align="char" 
> (though I'm not sure if any browsers obey it...) and was assuming FOP 
> should have something at least that clear and useful.
> 
> --
> Jess Holle



Jeremias Maerki

Re: FOP 0.90 Feedback

[Jess Holle <je...@ptc.com>]

Jeremias Maerki wrote:

>Funny coincidence. I just issued another request for feedback on
>fop-users. Thanks for yours!
>
>It's understandable that auto table layout is a big desire. Not only for
>those who want to create reports from database queries but also for
>those who want to convert (X)HTML to PDF. I personally believe that it
>will not be a huge task to get some basic auto table layout
>functionality with the new codebase. Still, I must admit that this topic
>is not on the top of my list, currently. I still hope somebody else
>might jump in.
>
>Concerning the tab stops: Unfortunately, this concept does not exist in
>XSL-FO and therefore not in FOP.
>
Actually I didn't really mean "tab stop", sorry.  I meant decimal 
alignment, which I had thought XSL FO had.

Perhaps I was thinking of XHTML, whose <td> element has align="char" 
(though I'm not sure if any browsers obey it...) and was assuming FOP 
should have something at least that clear and useful.

--
Jess Holle

Re: FOP 0.90 Feedback

[Jeremias Maerki <de...@jeremias-maerki.ch>]

Funny coincidence. I just issued another request for feedback on
fop-users. Thanks for yours!

It's understandable that auto table layout is a big desire. Not only for
those who want to create reports from database queries but also for
those who want to convert (X)HTML to PDF. I personally believe that it
will not be a huge task to get some basic auto table layout
functionality with the new codebase. Still, I must admit that this topic
is not on the top of my list, currently. I still hope somebody else
might jump in.

Concerning the tab stops: Unfortunately, this concept does not exist in
XSL-FO and therefore not in FOP. The usual work-around (if you don't
have a fixed number of places behind the comma) is to have two adjacent
columns. On the left one you write out the part before the decimal
separator plus the separator itself and on the right one you write the
part behind the separator. Obviously, this takes a little XSLT magic.

On 08.12.2005 17:04:51 Jess Holle wrote:
> I noticed 0.90 and the request for feedback.
> 
> Just a small nugget of point feedback:
> 
> For my own usage, FOP's applicability and usefulness will not change 
> from that of 0.20.5 until auto table layout is implemented.
> 
> I note that in the 0.90 release notes that it is not yet implemented, 
> unfortunately.
> 
> I assume that the FOP developers made great strides in many areas since 
> 0.20.5, but the lack of auto table layout kills general relational data 
> set output single-handedly.  By "general", I mean use of a single XSLT 
> to generate appropriate XSL FO for a given type of tabular output.  By 
> "given type of tabular output", I do not mean that a different XSLT 
> should be used depending on how many columns are in the resulting table 
> -- rather the same XSLT is used irrespective of number of columns unless 
> the look-and-feel or functionality (e.g. a summation line should be 
> added) of the table should change.
> 
> Decimal separator-based tab stops would also be nice in this same use 
> case, but the critical need is automatic table layout.
> 
> --
> Jess Holle



Jeremias Maerki

Re: FOP 0.90 Feedback

[Jeremias Maerki <de...@jeremias-maerki.ch>]

We only use Avalon for its nice little configuration package nowadays.
Logging has been switched over to JCL. The interesting point here is
that switching to JCL was actually a step backwards, since it's
currently quite difficult to extract per-rendering-run information from
FOP in a multi-threaded environment. That was no problem when we still
used Avalon Logging.

On 08.12.2005 17:09:46 Jess Holle wrote:
> One other bit of feedback:
> 
> Few other pieces of software appear to use Avalon.  It's not a big deal, 
> but using JCL might be a bit more consistent with other libraries folk 
> are using (i.e. within a server environment).
> 
> Jess Holle wrote:
> 
> > I noticed 0.90 and the request for feedback.
> >
> > Just a small nugget of point feedback:
> >
> > For my own usage, FOP's applicability and usefulness will not change 
> > from that of 0.20.5 until auto table layout is implemented.
> >
> > I note that in the 0.90 release notes that it is not yet implemented, 
> > unfortunately.
> >
> > I assume that the FOP developers made great strides in many areas 
> > since 0.20.5, but the lack of auto table layout kills general 
> > relational data set output single-handedly.  By "general", I mean use 
> > of a single XSLT to generate appropriate XSL FO for a given type of 
> > tabular output.  By "given type of tabular output", I do not mean that 
> > a different XSLT should be used depending on how many columns are in 
> > the resulting table -- rather the same XSLT is used irrespective of 
> > number of columns unless the look-and-feel or functionality (e.g. a 
> > summation line should be added) of the table should change.
> >
> > Decimal separator-based tab stops would also be nice in this same use 
> > case, but the critical need is automatic table layout.
> >
> > -- 
> > Jess Holle



Jeremias Maerki

Re: FOP 0.90 Feedback

[Jess Holle <je...@ptc.com>]

One other bit of feedback:

Few other pieces of software appear to use Avalon.  It's not a big deal, 
but using JCL might be a bit more consistent with other libraries folk 
are using (i.e. within a server environment).

Jess Holle wrote:

> I noticed 0.90 and the request for feedback.
>
> Just a small nugget of point feedback:
>
> For my own usage, FOP's applicability and usefulness will not change 
> from that of 0.20.5 until auto table layout is implemented.
>
> I note that in the 0.90 release notes that it is not yet implemented, 
> unfortunately.
>
> I assume that the FOP developers made great strides in many areas 
> since 0.20.5, but the lack of auto table layout kills general 
> relational data set output single-handedly.  By "general", I mean use 
> of a single XSLT to generate appropriate XSL FO for a given type of 
> tabular output.  By "given type of tabular output", I do not mean that 
> a different XSLT should be used depending on how many columns are in 
> the resulting table -- rather the same XSLT is used irrespective of 
> number of columns unless the look-and-feel or functionality (e.g. a 
> summation line should be added) of the table should change.
>
> Decimal separator-based tab stops would also be nice in this same use 
> case, but the critical need is automatic table layout.
>
> -- 
> Jess Holle